Furniture chairs which can be both rocked and swiveled have long been considered to be a desirable form of seating. U.S. Pat. No. 3,053,570 illustrates a rocker fixture for this purpose which is believed to be representative of a common type of fixture used in chairs of this type. These fixtures employ rocker members secured to the underside of the chair seat and supported on a swivel plate with a plurality of spiral springs arranged to resist rocking movement of the rocker members on the swivel plate. These fixtures are satisfactory for their intended purpose and are used in substantial numbers. However, by virtue of the number of parts involved, particularly the heavy spiral springs, the fixtures require substantial assembly time and are subject to fatigue failure at any one of a number of points.
Also, it is known to use torsion bars in chair rockers to yieldably resist rocking movement of the chair seat. Such a structure is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,334,618.
The present invention provides an improved rocker swivel assembly in which a torsion bar unit is employed to yieldably resist rocking movement of the chair, and, in addition, the torsion bar is employed to resist downwardly directed seating loads and as a component in the swivel assembly. The result is a structure which enables the desired rocking and swiveling movement of a chair without the complexities and structural weaknesses heretofore found in prior art structures.